One of my best summer jobs was driving a Ford L-Series beverage truck for Pepsi in Kansas. It was for a rural route that ran from Wichita north as far as Little River and every place in between that wasn’t a mega-store. Originally I was to be a ride along helper, but I was given a solo route that opened up right after I was hired. So I joined the Pepsi People and caught that Pepsi Spirit.

I was given new personalized uniforms, and trained to do everything needed to deliver twenty-six different Pepsi beverages. Until my experience at Pepsi, I had no realization of the involvement in having soft drinks show up in pop machines, corner drug stores, supermarkets and even churches. As a route driver, I had to have the right product in the right container when my truck left the distribution facility each day. Luckily, the 1987 Ford L700 I drove as a daily working truck was one tough machine. Pepsi ensured that their fleet of beverage trucks was perfectly maintained. These trucks were vital to their continued success and no expenses were spared.

The L700 was not fancy, although it had a huge 7.3 liter V8 engine in it and was only a few years old. It came with a heavy duty five-speed which, having over 170,000 miles on it, was barely broken in by the standards of the fleet. The cab was painted Pepsi blue and the box was painted Pepsi red, white and blue, with a Mountain Dew logo across the back end. Every night my truck was scrubbed inside and out. Every product bay was blasted and disinfected before it was reloaded. The entire Pepsi fleet was maintained on site by a squadron of mechanics and a platoon of college kids, and my truck was always in perfect order when I arrived at dawn every morning.

My L700 was one of the smaller trucks. Eight full bays would hold an entire six foot tall pallet of Pepsi products. There were four more half bays over the wheel wells that were connected to the other side of truck. These were for returnable glass bottles in wooden racks and glass disposables. As the day went on, they emptied depending on my route’s needs and orders. Total weight was about 9-10,000 pounds of product on average, if my memory serves me well. It wasn’t unusual for me to “throw” over 2000 cases a day. There were also days I had to return to the warehouse and reload to later build case displays in stores.

At 185 pounds, I was the lightest thing in my Ford L 700. From six in the morning after I counted up my products on the truck, until my final delivery, I manhandled each case from the truck onto shelves or into coolers. On busy sales days, this meant twelve hour days of intense manual labor. I did it wearing a full Pepsi uniform and the best damn boots I could afford. Eat? No. I was lucky, if I could get enough liquid in me each day to piss and would usually sweat out everything I drank. After a few months of this work you end up sinewy, skinny and deeply tanned from the hot Kansan sunshine. It is not a job for anyone out of shape.

The last thing you need is an undependable truck or a truck that makes doing the job even harder. The Ford L700 was perfect for its duties. The cab was no-nonsense and bare-bones, with no radio, no air conditioning, no carpeting and not a single soft surface to be found inside, except for the flat, black vinyl bench seat. Since I climbed up into it throughout the day and often did so reaching up and grabbing the steering wheel, the Ford’s tiller was simple, hard and rugged. The entire interior of these trucks had to be able to handle a sweaty man, so everything was washable and the night crew cleaned up the inside of the L700 like a gym crew would clean locker rooms at a YMCA. We had to be presentable to the public every day.

A Kansan summer will see temperatures reach the 90s and above, so the windows were always down, except during heavy rains. More than a few times, I would stand inside an empty open bay during a thunderstorm. With its no nonsense interior, the Ford didn’t have to be babied when the rain poured in through the open windows. And regardless of the weather, the vent windows were always opened as far as possible to catch the wind and blow it into the cab.

With so much on my mind, I didn’t give my truck much thought, and that was a shame. Like any totally dependable partner, that big old L700 was an invisible friend who always had my back. It never complained about the heat, the dust, the storms, the traffic, my end-of-the-day nasty, sweaty self, the distances we drove, or all the leaks that failed cans and bottles would spill inside of it. The Ford L Series was a damn good, simple truck that was indispensable to those whose livelihoods depended upon it. I owe it a lot.

I’ll never forget the summer heat beating down on both of us as we rolled down empty Kansas highways towards the distant grain elevators which marked co-ops, general stores, or gas stations. The weekly arrival of the Pepsi truck is a highlight for some of these little crossroads and the Kansans I met on my route were great people. Although I worked like a dog, I had time between stops to climb into the Ford’s lofty cab, feel the hot wind blow across the flat treeless wheat fields, and savor my work. The next time you reach for a soda, think a moment about the grunts who got it there. It is their pleasure to serve you.

This type of soft drink carrier along with the smaller ones are being use here to distribute 20# propane gas cylinders. Propane distributors purchase used ones really cheap, refurbish them and to a new life in the propane gas industry. They are perfect for that job. And Zackman I’m with you, Coca Cola is the BEST.

Being from north of the 49th parallel, I cannot remember a 5 cent soft drink. My favorite cola as a kid was “Big Sixteen”. It was 16 ounces of cola for the same 10 cents that the 10 ounce RC’s Pepsi’s and Cokes cost. To an eight year old, the choice was obvious. Of course, the Cuban Missile crisis happened, sugar went up due to the embargo and pop went to 12 cents. Despite my protests, my allowance did not keep up with this geopoliticaly induced inflation. In some ways it was an early preview of the first gas crisis.

Great piece about a good honest job and a good honest truck. Several years ago, I did some volunteer work for our local St. Vincent dePaul Society. They had a fleet of retread rental trucks that were big yellow Ford box trucks – can’t remember if they were the big L series like this or the smaller F700-type, but they had big gasoline V8 engines, stick shifts, and that simple Ford truck interior. Your description mirrors my own experience. Those trucks, even very late in life, were like big old gentle dogs that never complained, just did whatever you asked them to with no fuss or drama.

This piece also reminded me of the days of Pepsi in 12 oz glass returnable bottles. The stuff never tasted better than in those thick returnables. Or maybe everything tastes better when you are a kid. I’ll bet those returnables were a royal pain to the route guys.

I enjoyed a lot of Pepsi until my early 20s. I have little interest in any soda now, and only drink diet if I do have one. The exception is one or two root beers a year, preferably poured over vanilla ice cream.

My kids like a lot of the treats I enjoyed a as a kid – think Hostess, etc. I almost never have any interest.

Well, soft drinks were made with real cane sugar back then, unlike the nasty corn syrup used in the past few decades. Which is why in CA there is a substantial business in importing Mexican Coke (still made with cane sugar), and they’re still in 12 oz bottles.

Yeah, they sell Mexican Coke at Costco here, and in some of the grocery stores. They also sell “throwback” Pepsi and Mt Dew, made with cane sugar, in most of the stores. Even so, I agree, pop (or soda or coke, depending where you’re from) just tasted better as a kid. As an adult what’s irritating is ordering a rum & Coke and getting a rum & Pepsi instead. No offense to Pepsi, but it ain’t the same!

jpcavanaugh

Posted February 7, 2014 at 8:42 AM

You remind me that white rum and Pepsi was one of the more successful parts of my college education – to this day I remember EXACTLY why I have not repeated the experience. :O=

Amazing! Vanilladude gives us an impassioned dissertation on the joys of driving his Ford Louisville, and all the Commentariate can focus on is the merits of one sugar water vs the other. So I’ll ask the informed question – could you catch second gear rubber in the bitch?

The Louisville was great fleet unit for many years-until Ford sold out to Sterling and parts support dried up almost overnight. I never understood why Ford walked away from their very strong position in the medium/heavy truck market.
Interesting perspective on the heat issue, here in the great white north these units were highly regarded by drivers because of their excellent heater/defroster system. Ours had 3208 Cats in them, which weren’t really a great engine for truck use but that’s not the trucks fault. These were a good honest truck that gave good value and lasted a long time.
I never thought I’d see the day when the L-series was a rare sight on the road, but it’s been at least 15 years since these were built and there are still a few on the job.

Ford bought Sterling back in the 30s and simply revived the brand Ive driven a few concrete mixer Louies, hugely unimpressed I got a Sterling one day and actually liked it apart from the usual disintegrating dashboard thats a feature of most American trucks it was an ok ride

No Ford did not own Sterling that name was once owned by White and somehow Daimler ended up with it when they bought Western Star from them. Since the purchase of the Louisville line didn’t include the use of the Ford name Daimler slapped it on the L series. They then attempted to build a full line truck company under that name by rebadging the Mitsubishi Fuso FE as the Sterling 360 and Dodge 4500 trucks as the Sterling Bullet.

I was (way) too young, and too far away….thanks to YouTube I can enjoy their live concerts. More or less.

But I had (still have) several albums, on vinyl and on CD. And from there on I travelled back in time to the authentic blues guys from the late twenties and thirties. In the record shops I was always in the far corners where no other living soul ever came….

Alright! Ford L700! We bought an L700 brand-new in…’75? ’76? for our grain-hauling truck with an 18′ dump box and a single rear axle. When fully loaded (~425 bushels) the box is actually too heavy for a single rear axle (legally), but until 1989, when my Dad first started renting land 8 miles north of our place, the farthest it would ever go fully loaded was 2 1/2 miles into town to the elevator, and the chances of the fuzz pulling you over (at least back in the 70’s) were pretty low. Farthest it ever went was somewhere down in NW IA to buy a steel bin, and that was nowhere near maxing out the payload…just put all the pieces in the box and away you go. The ride is tolerable when unloaded, but handles a lot nicer with 25,000+ lbs. of corn/beans/oats in the back. The 370 (which, I’m pretty sure, is the same as a 429, just not bored out as much) has plenty of pull and doesn’t complain much if you downshift too quick.
Just this last harvest, I played truck jockey to the farm 8 miles north; I would drive the pickup and grain trailer up unloaded, then bring the loaded truck back home and unload it, then Dad would do the opposite. On one of the few times I drove the L700 up unloaded, I discovered the trick to the split rear axle, and that was to only use it after 5th gear (so 4-HI becomes “6th”, and 5-HI becomes “7th”). Wow, I didn’t know it was physically possible for something so big to go so fast! And with good reason–once you mash the pedal in “7th” and get up to a blistering 60 mph on a gravel road, the whole truck feels like it’s about to shake apart.
With the miles we put on it in a year, that L700 is probably good for at least another 15 years.

Yes the 370 is the small version of the Ford “385” family of engines that included the 429 and 460. I find it interesting that they kept the 429 for truck use long after they switched cars and light duty trucks to the 460.

Don’t fix what ain’t broke, I guess. If you can sell the fleet manager the older, smaller engine for $x less, times how many trucks in the fleet, that’s a big selling point. The 370 was never used for any passenger vehicles, IIRC.

I had a few F-600s with the 370. It was a damn good engine and once the warranty was up all it took was a distributor re-curve and you had all the power you’d ever need in a truck that size. I don’t know why Ford stayed with the 429 for MD truck use, but it hung on well into the ’80s. Had a few of those as well and I don’t recall one ever blowing up. we set them up to run on propane and they were cheaper to run than diesels. The Lima series was Ford’s best V-8 by far in my opinion.

Great piece. Amazing they wouldn’t give you a radio to pass the time. Would have been nice to know about some of those nasty storms that cross the land as well.

I know a guy that drove for Pepsi or Coke for a while. I had the impression he made pretty good money. Like you said, it is very hard work and he eventually got into computer programming and is doing well today as an IT manager.

I don’t think I could have heard a radio over the daily din of the cab anyway. I know a couple of the guys took along a portable CD player. But the goal is to get the product out of the bays and onto the shelves and into the coolers. I don’t think a lot of my stores would have like hearing me jam Beck’s latest, Nirvana, Garbage or Black Hole Sun out behind their stores – even if they needed the Pepsi.

When I worked in a supermarket the vendor reps (whose company rides are mostly compact cars since they arrive separately from the load which is palletized and stored in the back room) made good salaries but often worked 12+ hour days for it. I try to let them cut ahead of me for the baler since I was getting paid by the hour and they’re not.

Grew up in a Pepsi drinking family in Kansas. At 18 I went to a Pepsi free environment (Navy – Overseas). Hardly ever drank soda as an adult. When I broke my back the doctor asked me if I drank soda. When I said no, she told me that I had probably avoided wholesale destruction by abstaining. Pepsi/Coke wars are a blast from the past and are probably more current than I know because I also avoid that other poison, TV.

Drove a school bus on field trips here in the Houston area. 26 Passenger IH with the same 7.3. It was bought out of West Virginia. Geared for the mountains that thing was all in at 60mph (faster than school bus national limit) but the strongest thing I have ever driven. Would have made a wonderful RV. The district probably still has it. Not many miles because it didn’t pick up students for a standard bus route and there is very little rust here.

Enjoyed reading the story. My old stomping grounds from years ago. Still have a sister on the west side of the area living in Cheney. Thanks VD

Excellent article! I worked on the maintenance crew at a state park a few summers during college, and they had an older L-series stake truck that we used for various tasks. No meticulous maintenance there…it was pretty clapped out and had previously been used by the state roads department. It was the previous generation L-series…memory’s foggy, but pretty sure it had some FE motor, though don’t recall the displacement. It had a two-speed axle which came in handy, for deceleration as much as acceleration… the brakes sucked! Used to have to drive occasionally between several other state parks… that old FE V8 roaring through a barely-muffled exhaust was pretty tired but fun to hear running up through the gears. The loose steering, though, was pretty scary. As a kid you felt like you owned the road in that big ol’ truck.

MD and HD trucks used the FT (Ford Truck) engine that was related to the FE (Ford Edsel) in that they used the same basic block but much of the rest of it was changed to stand up to the truck use. However at a glance the FT and FE look almost the same.

In the early eighties I bought a book about American trucks. One of the first pages, a mighty Ford LTL 9000 in full West Coast outfit. And then a few huge photos that struck me even more: the interior of the Ford CL 9000 COE. Red and caramel, exactly like these from a Ford brochure I found on the ATHS forum.

I also remember the text (the book was in Dutch), something like this: Kenworth and Peterbilt had prestige. But the Ford surpassed them with its excellent build quality and great level of comfort for the driver.

Which brings me to this “Pepsi-Ford”. It may be tough, it may be no-nonsense. But just look at the interior. It has less comfort than a mobile Turkish prison cell on concrete wheels. Being in this, daily, for many years in a row ? It will fasten your aging process very rapidly. Maybe it was acceptable in the fifties, but certainly not in anything after 1970. Come on, commuting in very comfortable land yachts and a truck driver had to spend his days in a cave ?

The ‘mighty” Louieville was also built in Aussie the quickly earned a poor reputation after one particularly troublesome one was featured on national television it put the owner operator into bankruptcy mostly through Ford refusing to honour its warranty there are very very few left in service and certainly not doing linehaul for profit.

The long-haul drivers loved it, it had a few major drawbacks though:
-Poor rust proofing of the Berliet cab.
-Fuel consumption of the (standard) 14 liter Cummins.
-Many of these engines had oil consumption issues.
-Lucas. (Need I say more ??)

The truck as a whole was years ahead of its time, remember that Ford-Europe had NO experience at all with long distance trucks. In those days “long distance” meant driving from the Netherlands all the way to Iran for example. Till then Ford only had the (excellent) Transit and D-series COEs.

Johannes: You’re mixing up long haul trucks and delivery trucks; two very different animals in almost every respect. Long haul truckers practically live in their cabs, and they are very nice now indeed, mostly. But delivery trucks are generally very local, and the driver gets in and out many times a day, and the distances driven between stops is usually measured more in blocks than hundreds of miles per day.

Even new delivery trucks have quite spartan interiors, compared to long haul trucks.

And ford’s attempt to compete with Pete and KW did not go over very well. The L-Series was popular as a medium-heavy truck, in fleet use, but did not make serious inroads in the long-haul market, which is of course quite different.

I fully understand the difference Paul. But it’s not the size of the cab and/or sleeper that matters. It’s about noise, vibrations, the suspension, ergonomics. Long haul or short haul, any driver deserves a decent level of comfort.

My father drove hundreds of thousands of miles in the seventies in 4×2 and 6×2 trucks with day cabs. Start driving in the morning and back in the evening. Loading and unloading several times a day. But those trucks had exactly the same level of comfort as the trucks the long-haul guys had. The cab was shorter and had no bed, but that was the only difference.

He likely drove European trucks the difference to US equipment is night and day Ive driven both recently both 2011 models a Scania and a International the Inter was noisy and rough with an appalling ride the Scania quiet and comfortable. The US truck was ok on smooth roads like its designed for on anything else it was terrible plenty of pull as usual but that really cant compare with European operator comfort and after driving Volvos,Scanias, Ivecos,Dafs, and most US sourced tractor units I know which I prefer. Mind you replacing the OEM seat with after market can improve things immensely especially in a US truck.

Johannes Dutch

Posted February 7, 2014 at 1:14 PM

Correct. He started driving in the mid-sixties in an Austin truck. He can’t remember the model name. It was a 4×2 flatbed COE truck and it was heavy-duty enough to carry a full load of bags of cattle feed, to be unloaded at the farms nearby the mill.

So have you driven an L7000 in comparison to the trucks you mention. I’m confused; in your comment you specifically talked about interior amenities like the upholstery and such. When I pointed out that those are really not desirable in truck that gets driven by young men sweating on them profusely all day, you switch your point to noise, vibration, etc. Are you in a position to definitively state that the trucks your father drove were less noisy and rode better?

Even so, you miss the point. Your father apparently drove “day cab” tractors. That’s a totally different class of trucks than this simple, two axle local delivery truck. It’s the same chassis that was used under a gazillion farm trucks, school buses, and local/regional trucks. I’ve never heard anyone say that they were any less comfortable than allt he other similar American trucks of this kind.

Or maybe you’re channeling Bryce now: “typical American rubbish….”

Johannes Dutch

Posted February 7, 2014 at 2:13 PM

Relax Paul, no sweat….I’m channeling no one, and where do I even slightly say or imply “typical American rubbish”…On the contrary, I like them and I’m interested in them. As you can reed in all my comments here when trucks are involved.

I compared a big Ford truck to a smaller one from the same era, that’s all. Thus coming to the generic term “comfort”.

As I said my father drove 4×2 and 6×2 trucks, not tractors. And those were flatbed delivery trucks. Loaded with 175 lbs bags in the early seventies and 110 lbs bags later on. Manually loaded and unloaded.
Or steel poultry farm equipment, again, manually loaded and unloaded. And I was with him, a lot. Helping out once I was old enough.

I was quoting Bryce. 🙂 And I’m quite relaxed. I was trying to respond appropriately to your original comment, where you lamented the spartan interior of the Pepsi delivery truck in comparison to those in a brochure for a long-haul truck. And I didn’t get your point, obviously. It’s still lost on me; I must be feeling dense today.

And after these additional comments, I still fail to get your second point, which is rather different than your first one. What is it? That the cab your father drove was more comfortable than the one VD drove. OK; but who’s in a position to actually make the direct comparison?

OK – I didn’t think I needed to get into too much of the daily life of a Pepsi delivery guy, but it helps to explain why the interiors are so simple and sparse.

The temperatures are often over 100 during the summer – dry – but still hot. We sweated out about 3-4 pounds of water weight every day. Depending on the temps, we had salt stains on our uniforms from perspiration by 2 PM. I used to sweat so much I toweled off before climbing out of the cab. Us guys talked about how hard it was to keep our pants up because of the fountains of sweat running down our backs. I had to have more than one leather belt – one to wear and the other to dry out from perspiration. Management had to let us wear special t-shirts so we didn’t have to have the extra heavy Pepsi uniforms wit the “Pepsi sweat patch” logo stitched across our backs. During summer, these uniforms were like wearing a suit in a sauna.

You combine buckets of male sweat, road dust, soda spillage and the sheer brutality of guys climbing out and into the cab and you have a real need for an interior that can be hosed down, disinfected and deodorized.

We keep cool by walking into convenience store freezers and clerks and management always knows how hot it is and hot we work. A lot of us guys lift and find the physical demands of the job some of the most appealing aspects of it. We are usually too hot to eat, too dried out to piss and often suffer from kidney stones as a result.

I still like to run long distance during the hottest part of the year and get completely drenched and disgusting. Once you experience the extreme, it is hard to stop getting off on it. Us route guys like pushing ourselves and making a very good living doing it.

Early in my driving career I got to run Ford L9s with a Cat 3406E over Donner Pass from Reno to Sac.

The ergonomics of the later version L9000s were pretty lousy; Combined with a cheap seat, super cheapo major fleet no frills interior and a 144″ WB on Spring Ride Build Quality was there on the Fords, comfort not so much.

Johannes, one thing you need to keep in mind that for the vast majority of the MD trucks the person who purchases it and the one who drives it are 2 different people, who quite often will never have met. For the owner/fleet manager the most important things are overall cost of operation and up time, driver comfort is at the bottom of the list, if it makes the list at all.

Those type of fleet owners have trouble keeping drivers, you either look after your drivers or they leave for better conditions so driver comfort is actually near the top of the list or you are out of business these days.

UPS drivers at least in the countryside tend to have a Boom Box wired up to their radio-less rigs. UPS still does not have AC equipped trucks, I wonder if Pepsi is the same way? I thought you were going to mention how certain places burn through different drinks faster than other places.

Spartan really you havent seen spartan untill youve driven a TK Bedford. I drove one delivering butter my area was Northland of NZ the same lovely twisty roads friend Clarkson couldnt control a Corolla on was my weekly route in a TK Bedford 300 petrol, 5 speed manual trans, armstrong steering no air no radio. The TK was the backbone of NZs short haul industry all long haul was mandated to rail however jobs like mine combined the two I delivered to every shop supermarket and roadside stand that sold butter in 20kg cases containing 40 pats of yellow gold hand unloaded no Zepro tail lifts back then and no forklifts at supermarkets either boy I was fit. NZs heavy vehicle speed limit was 70kmh however I’d had the govenor opened up to achieve 95kmh on the flat uphill was still a crawl laden and on one occasion I was overtaken by a pedestrian admittedly he was jogging but still I could only get 9kmh up turntable hill in 2nd gear and a rugby player in training can do more. Found this rare still working survivor last week in tipper but still a TK.

Hello, do you know what year is that pepsi truck? I am doing a research for school about the cars from the 60s in america. If you have any tips and hints it is very welcome. This site is awesome for what I am looking for, thank you a lot.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story, a real ode to the American proletariat. It makes me want to go to Kansas and explore the small towns and is written in such a way to make me envious of your experience.

I delivered dry cleaning for some time and that’s a piece of cake in comparison. Having to get it all out to customers on time really stressed me out, but it seems you didn’t sweat it, pun intended.

Great story. I lived long enough to dislike every Ford truck as it came out and then realize in retrospect that they were always the best choice after 10 or so years had passed. I’m excluding the 6.0 disaster but I now find myself appreciating the V 10 which seemed such a turd at the time. I hated the FE engines but I’ve been looking for a chores truck and have found, even at 30 below here, a pretty big range of 1961 to 1979 Fords still in use and several for sale with the crappy old 360 still running fine. I may pull the trigger on a 1965 f250 even.

We had louisvilles in the NWT and they were solid trucks.

I remember when a local contractor tried a FUSO 4×4 as a logging service truck. Replaced by a f550 in short order. North America isn’t all paved yet.

There is often a trade-off between efficiency and reliability or durability, and people often focus too much on the day-to-day costs and don’t worry about the big ticket costs (replacement or rebuild) until they occur.

I like the occasional Coke or Pepsi…long as its the Mexi varieties in the old school glass bottles with cane sugar. New Seasons and a few latin markets have both. But I rarely drink sodas. 2 in a month is a soda storm for me.

Great story Vanilla. Your peek into your world was NOT unnecessary at all, btw. It was a great read.

Ive driven a box truck at a job back in Roseburg in ’01. I split time between being a salesman and a delivery driver. The furniture store I worked at had Drove our Isuzu NPR cabover all over the Douglas county area and loved that rig. Only had a tape player, the other guy and myself had 2 cassettes between us: his Wedding Singer soundtrack, and I had a Misfits complation. For 6 months that was all we listened to! Good times. And Ive always thought COE’s were neat as it was, driving one every day (and 2 cross country rides in rented Budget NPR’s) only sealed that deal. The visibility and driving position made it feel more like a big rig as opposed to the few conventionals Ive driven. Ive driven dozens of f/s pickups so those don’t feel a lot different at all.